Darkness on the Edge of Town [Import] [Limited Edition]

Track Listings

1. Badlands

2. Adam Raised a Cain

3. Something in the Night

4. Candy's Room

5. Racing in the Streets

6. Promised Land

7. Factory

8. Streets of Fire

9. Prove It All Night

10. Darkness on the Edge of Town

Editorial Reviews
Album Details
Japanese Limited Edition Issue in a Deluxe LP Sleeve Replica of the Original Album Artwork.

Tracks:

Badlands
Adam Raised A Cain
Something In The Night
Candy's Room
Racing In The Street
The Promised Land
Factory
Streets Of Fire
Prove It All Night
Darkness At The Edge Of Town

Amazon.com essential recording

The pain of a protracted legal battle with his former manager and the release of being allowed to record again after a three-year layoff are equally apparent from the piercing hard rock and harsh lyrical content of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Betrayal and hard work that comes to naught are the primary subjects on his mind here, evidenced by songs such as "Adam Raised a Cain," "Factory," and "Streets of Fire." Elsewhere, there are signs of hope or at least the possibility of outrunning your problems ("Racing in the Street," "The Promised Land," "Prove It All Night"). But mostly, these are songs about exorcising some serious demons, and from the sound of things, Springsteen's loud, lonesome howl and blistering guitar work went a long way toward making him whole again. This is angry art, made by someone pushed to his absolute limit and more than ready to push back. --Daniel Durchholz

Album Description

Import exclusive two-disc set combines Bruce's 1978 album Darkness On The Edge Of Town with his1982 album Nebraska. Two standard jewel cases housed in a slip case. Sony/BMG. 2005.

Customer Reviews:

A major letdown.......2007-07-08

This was the album that got me to stop buying Springsteen albums. The first three albums had been great. Born to Run, the album that preceeded this one, was an absolute masterpiece. So I had high hopes when I bought Darkness. They were all dashed.

What happened? You see these reviews here having orgasms about the angry, harsh attitude of the songs. Yay. Notice that nobody talks about the actual *quality* of the music. After there albums where Bruce evidenced great songwriting skill, coming up with wonderful chord progressions, fantastic song structures with unexpected twists, and really showing off his talented band to good effect, on darkness he regresses to simplistic, boring, utterly predictable 3-chord songs. For instance, Badlands: the same ultra-basic 3 chords over and over again, the verse the same as the chorus. Gee Bruce, what'd it take you, 5 whole minutes to think up that one? And THAT song is one of the better on the album! (at least the tune is catchy). There's a few songs which are ok, most are pretty forgettable.

And as for the arrangements and the use of the band, one statistic speaks volumes: Clarence Clemon's magnificent saxaphone plays for about 24 bars *on the whole album* (three short little 8 bar solos, and that's it!).

I love the darkness here..........2007-04-27

This is my favorite Springsteen album. I play it quite often, and the songs are equally angry, sad, poetic, and haunted. Badlands, the title track, and Adam Raised a Cain are brutal and brilliant. Adam especially is a really scorching track. Racing in the Street is one of Bruce's most despairing songs, but it's still quite moving. You can really feel the desperation of the characters in the song. Even the lesser tracks like Factory (a song I like a lot) have a world weariness and power to them that most artists today can't even come close too. The Promised Land is another great Bruce anthem, one of his greatest songs. The cover is really something. It looks like Bruce just woke up, and you have to give him credit for making himself look so average. Most rockers wouldn't do that, because they're so obsessed with their image. I think this is Bruce's best work.

one of his top 3 albums. says me........2007-04-06

springsteen's 1973-1978 years were an amazing run, almost as great as the rolling stones 1968-1972 years. each album that he released in this stretch of time was fantastic. "darkness on the edge of town" is his starkest production from that era. a masterpiece that is intense and dramatic, with a big drum and bass sound, and several of the finest songs in our rock and roll canon. "badlands," "the promised land," "prove it all night," and the title track are all powerful, heavenly rock performances. "adam raised a cain," "something in the night," and "streets of fire," may be less known, perhaps less lauded, but are each great in their own right. the lyrical guitar solo and sax solo on "promised land" are both gorgeous; and the raw, wild telecaster sound of the solo on "streets of fire" is soul-stirring. bruce's voice is uninhibated, soars with emotion and drama, and is tremendous throughout. johnny cash. bob dylan. bruce springsteen: my trio of homegrown american voices that are indispensable (if you want to make it a quartet and throw in billy joe shaver, i won't argue). your life will seem vaguely empty without lots of music from these gentlemen around the house.

A masterpiece from the Boss.......2007-03-21

Perhaps the best album of the 70's. There is no filler on this album. It's quintessential Bruce from start to finish.

My all time favorite album.......2007-02-16

Hard hitting, thought provoking, intense, emothional... just a few adjectives to describe this true gem.

Every song on this album is classic. Even the plainest arrangement on the album (Factory) lyrics have a serious bite to them. The title track is Rock and Roll poetry at it's absolute finest. Badlands ranks among Springsteen's five best songs, and that's no small accomplishment, yet Promised Land, Racing In the Street, and Prove It All Night are just as good. The rest of the album is on that same level. Adam Raised A Cain, Candy's Room, Streets of Fire, and the aforementioned Prove It All Night all have searing (as opposed to soaring) guitar work. Springsteen's guitar tracks burn a hole deep into your soul. It's not the flashy guitar god fret flying Van Halenesque style. It's a style that is filled with raw emotion. Lyrically, there are only three people in popular music who could be rated as high as Springsteen as a aongwriter. They are Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Tom Waits. Dylan's peaks have matched Springsteens, but only Waits has been as consistent.

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J./The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle/Darkness on the Edge of Town

Average customer rating:

E street boys
Triple Shot Of Bruce Juice
3 Bangs: Less Than 30 Measley Bucks ?!
Holy smokes! 3 of Springsteen's records at once!

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J./The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle/Darkness on the Edge of Town
Bruce Springsteen
Manufacturer: Sony
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Tracks

ASIN: B000063WD9
Release Date: 2002-04-02

Customer Reviews:

E street boys.......2007-06-27

It was great to get Bruce and the boys together in one package.I only had the old buggered vinyl.these were the days when I lived Darkness and was immortal .Stan

Triple Shot Of Bruce Juice.......2004-11-20

Greetings From Asbury Park served notice that there was a new musical force on the scene. On his debut, Bruce showed he was the best songwriter to come along since Bob Dylan. The album kicks off with the musical tongue twister "Blinded By The Light" that showed Bruce wasn't a typical singer-songwriter. The song has a funky riff and is replete with horns. "Spirit In The Night" introduced the E Street sound and is a precursor to the character oriented songs that would appear later on Born To Run & Wild. "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd St?" is fun and "For You" is a rare rock song about suicide. "Growin' Up" & It's So Hard To Be A Saint In The City" show early signs of Bruce's "Tramp" persona. "Lost In The Flood" is the great forgotten Bruce song and is as good a song as he has ever recorded. While Greetings is uneven at points ("Mary, Queen of Arkansas' & "The Angel"), it shows an artist who had a very original sound and huge potential. It is great to throw it in the CD player and hear a young, raw and hungry Bruce Springsteen and listen to where it all started.

The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street shuffle may only contain 7 songs, but they pack a punch and are among the finest of Bruce's career. The album opens with the funky guitar riff of "The E Street Shuffle". "4th Of July" is the song that made Asbury Park famous and Madame Marie's a mecca for Bruce fans. "Kitty's Back" is a blazing rock 'n' soul workout and is followed by the comical "Wild Billy's Circus Story". On the original album, the last three songs constituted side two and it is about as perfect of an album side as there is in history. "Incident on 57th Street", "Rosalita" and "New York City Serenade" is a three part musical suite and they flow seamlessly into one another. The stories they tell are so vivid that they are almost like musical literature. Bruce has released albums that were musically superior to Wild, but never one that was this much fun.

In Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Springsteen's characters are no longer looking to escape their problems, they've giving up escape a long time ago. They are searching for answers to the situations they find themselves in. Optimism has been replaced by despair and cynicism. "Badlands" is an angry anthem about never being satisfied with where you are in life. "Adam Raised A Cain" is about the struggles between a father and his angry son and "Factory" is about the drudgery of everyday life. Songs like "Something In The Night", "The Promised Land" and "Racing In The Streets" are about chasing a dream that one will probably never find. "Candy's Room", "Streets Of Fire" & "Prove It All Night" are about putting everything on the line for someone and having to constantly prove their devotion. The title song best sums up the album. People are looking for answers to the same questions, willing to pay the cost, but never find them. No matter how much time they search into the Darkness On The Edge Of Town, they end up in the same place.

3 Bangs: Less Than 30 Measley Bucks ?!.......2003-08-12

If I didn't have all three of these albums in my collection, I'd jump on this deal. 3 early Bruce albums for ...? Each disc buries every post-"River" album (with the exception of "Nebraska") by a long shot. Of the 3, "Wild & Innocent" is the least accessible, and even it boasts 'Rosalita', '4th of July'(better known as 'Sandy'), and the weighty 'New York City Serenade'. The poetry on "Greetings" is weird, and playful, and fun as hell: "Nuns run bald through Vatican halls, pregnant, pleading immaculate conception...?" And "Darkness"? Well, it's just a rock-solid album, pun intended. These albums are must-haves for anyone who knew and loved Bruce before the "Born in the USA" debacle.

Holy smokes! 3 of Springsteen's records at once!.......2002-04-03

In my humble opinion, 'The Wild, the Innocent, & the E st. Shuffle' remains one of Bruce's best albums. Taking a lot of inspiration from Van Morrison's 'Astrel Weeks,' Springsteen made a funky record that plays like cinema. Sort of a Scorsese-meets-Fellini epic. This was the record that had the East Coast rock community waiting in anticipation for what turned out to be 'Born to Run.' (hence the simultanious Time & Newsweek cover stories)

Tracks:

Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Something in the Night
Candy's Room
Racing in the Streets
Promised Land
Factory
Streets of Fire
Prove It All Night
Darkness on the Edge of Town

Album Details

Japanese Limited Edition Issue in a Deluxe LP Sleeve Replica of the Original Album Artwork.

Customer Reviews:

Here's a Winner.......2007-07-05

As everybody else has pointed out beforehand, Darkness is much, well... darker than previous Springsteen albums. His working-class losers were no longer romanticized. They were now just... losers. Losers without hope. It was their fault that they were in whatever situation they were in, and they had no way out. Badlands sets the tone right away. At least the defeated lyrics do - ironically, it's set to a happy upbeat pop melody with memorable sax and guitar solos. Badlands was a major radio hit, and it's always been a favorite of mine. Even better is Prove It All Night, which sounds similar to Badlands (actually, several of these songs do - we'll get to that later), but manages to lift itself above it simply because the sax and guitar solos are better. Oh yeah, and it's a cynical song about sex. How many other sex songs are cynical? Adam Raised a Cain is great: a totally original pun in the title, lyrically an awesome meditation on Bruce's troubled relationship with his father (though I prefer the similarly themed Independence Day), and it's probably the heaviest rocker Bruce ever committed to tape. His vocal on that song goes from mumbled in the beginning to downright fierce during the last verse, when he drops all pretense of self-control and just screams for his life. "IN THE BIBLE CAIN SLEW ABLE! AND EAST OF EDEN, MAMA, HE WAS CAST..." Whoa. Just whoa. Something in the Night is a very underrated song, and it has more of that emotion: I especially love the beginning, with Bruce spending about a minute screaming "Whoa......oh, all right......whoa......oh, all right...... WHOA-OH-OH-OH!". Spectacular. So are the lyrics.
Unlike last two albums, Bruce doesn't go grandiose here at all. Only one song is stretched out to epic length (Racing in the Streets), and that isn't exactly huge like Jungleland, Backstreets, Rosalita or New York City Serenade. It's quite restrained, actually, and quite beautiful. Oh, and the soft/loud dynamics and intelligent lyrics on the bitter title track really grab me.
Now for the album's biggest flaw: a lot of it sounds alike. Now I quite like the Promised Land, but it's pretty much a rewrite of Badlands (even the titles are similar!) with a harmonica thrown in. Like I said, still a very nice song (Bruce's guitar tone on the solo stands out to me), just a bit samey. And either Streets of Fire is an adequate but inferior rewrite of the title song, or the title song is a totally superior rewrite of Streets of Fire - sonically and structurally, there are several similarities between the two.
Now the only song I don't really like is Candy's Room. How was it a hit? I don't get it. It's void of emotion, excitement or originality, and the guitar solo is a proto-'80s guitar solo. Ouch.
There's a bit to complain about regarding Darkness, but really it's quite a noteworthy release.

Cool LP Sleeve Design, Not So Great Sound!, .......2006-03-26

This is one of Bruce's better albums and the tracks still sound as good as they've always done but now we get them in a cool lp sleeve format. This version has all the lyrics printed on a mini flyer insert albeit you'll need a good magnifying glass to read them but it's still a nice touch. No need to despair though as both the Japanese and English lyrics are also reproduced on an insert.

Why just 4 stars then? Well, the recording isn't remastered and so the sound is about the same quality as the cheaper U.S. press that you can get you hands on elsewhere.

As far as unremastered discs go, this is probably quite decent if you don't mind the muddy sound but seeing as how practically everybody and their grannies have had their classic albums remastered and cleaned up, I wonder what's keeping Bruce's people from doing the same.

So unless you are a very big fan of lp sleeves like I am, you may not want to spend the extra bucks on this.

Don't get me wrong, the album is still great with regards the tracks but I guess if you already have this, what's it going to take to make you wanna get another version of the same thing? I'm guessing it's either vastly improved sound quality and/or improved packaging. This disc only fulfils one of these two criteria so you decide what you wanna do.

By the way, it's the same with the other titles in this format like "Born To Run." and "Born in the U.S.A." etc. just so you know. As I don't already have copies of these discs, I didn't mind too much but I don't know about you.

Average customer rating:

Darkness on the Edge of Town
Bruce Springsteen
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Pop | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B000026X58
Release Date: 2004-01-06

Tracks:

Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Something in the Night
Candy's Room
Racing in the Streets
Promised Land
Factory
Streets of Fire
Prove It All Night
Darkness on the Edge of Town

Album Description

Digitally remastered Japanese reissue of The Boss' 1978 album. The double-platinum 'Darkness On The Edge Of Town' made the top five in the U.S., and contains several of his best from the '70s, including the chart hits 'Prove It All Night' & 'Badlands', pl

[2 CDs ITALIAN IMPORT] Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. / Darkness On The Edge Of Town

Average customer rating:

[2 CDs ITALIAN IMPORT] Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. / Darkness On The Edge Of Town

ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Singer-Songwriters | Pop | Styles | Music

Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters | Rock | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000FJ18UC

Average customer rating:

A major letdown
I love the darkness here...
one of his top 3 albums. says me.
A masterpiece from the Boss
My all time favorite album

Darkness on the Edge of Town
Bruce Springsteen
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Pop | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters | Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

General | Rock | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters | Rock | Styles | Music

Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

General | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Classic Rock | Imports | Stores | Music

Rock | Imports | Stores | Music
Similar Items:

Born to Run
The River
The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
Nebraska

ASIN: B000025TZK
Release Date: 2005-11-29

Tracks:

Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Something in the Night
Candy's Room
Racing in the Streets
Promised Land
Factory
Streets of Fire
Prove It All Night
Darkness on the Edge of Town

Amazon.com essential recording

Album Description

Import exclusive two-disc set combines Bruce's 1978 album Darkness On The Edge Of Town with his1982 album Nebraska. Two standard jewel cases housed in a slip case. Sony/BMG. 2005.

Customer Reviews:

A major letdown.......2007-07-08

I love the darkness here..........2007-04-27

one of his top 3 albums. says me........2007-04-06

A masterpiece from the Boss.......2007-03-21

Perhaps the best album of the 70's. There is no filler on this album. It's quintessential Bruce from start to finish.

My all time favorite album.......2007-02-16

Music Review:

Music Review

Music Review

1. Badlands
2. Adam Raised a Cain
3. Something in the Night
4. Candy's Room
5. Racing in the Streets
6. Promised Land
7. Factory
8. Streets of Fire
9. Prove It All Night
10. Darkness on the Edge of Town